


Northen Lad

by cactusandalily



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: M/M, Mild Angst, based on her tweet about revisiting old places walking under the rain listening to Tori Amos, katya is walking around Boston trying but failing to keep her mind off Trixie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 08:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12649968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cactusandalily/pseuds/cactusandalily
Summary: She would make Boston be entirely of her own once more, leave only scars where there were once wounds so deep they needed intensive care.“When I say it was weird I mean I never thought this was going to happen. We have to much to lose to be reckless”, Trixie’s choked up voice came back. Well, she was never careful in this city, Katya wanted to say even after all this time. Why should she be careful with her heart?





	Northen Lad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mallstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mallstars/gifts).



> Based on Katya's tweet when she was in Boston waiting for Trixie "Ladies please don't wander through old places nostalgically in the rain whilst listening to Northen Lad by Tori Amos unless you wanna die."
> 
> Come say hi or talk to me about this at tumblr.com/cactus-and-a-lily !

The saying goes “don’t go back to a place where you were happy”. Don’t go back to cities that mean something, to streets you’ve walked in, to bars where you hung out with friends and got wasted. Don’t go back to those places because they change and they are not the same. What they should really say, Katya thought as she let out some smoke from her cigarette, squinted at the sun in her face, is don’t go back to the moments where you were happy. Don’t relive them, because they will never measure up and that will only lead to disappointment. Don’t cross those parks, listen to the same music, visit the same stores because the inevitable truth that no one mentions, is that they stay the same and it’s you who changes. The city around you morphs into a different state every day but the essence remains. It’s people that move forward, because even if you stay put you are bound to change.

She sat down and tapped her phone awake, checked for a call or a text letting her know that the plane got delayed, that they needed to reschedule, that she was going to have to do the show on her own. She toyed with a second cigarette in her hand, determined not to light it and forced her anxiety to stay at bay. To not go directly into worse case scenario, to will the voices in her head to stay quiet and reassure herself that everything would go smoothly. She looked up to Trinity Church, beaming in its reflection on the tall, mirrored front of Hancock Tower. From its top you could see the entirety of the city, walk around its circumference in less than 10 minutes and take in Boston in all its splendor. She was at the most touristy area of the city and yet the calmness reached her to her very core, bringing peace where moments ago there was only doubt and deafening noise. Even if she was surrounded by hundreds of people, no one payed attention to her. “Nobody is a prophet in his land” another saying went, and she was glad that she had the entire day for herself to peruse around mindlessly, the first quiet one in months.

She made her way towards City Hall and the market, opting out on walking through it. _“If I wanted a crowded place to eat out of paper plates I would have stayed in Wisconsin”_ she could hear crystal clear like it was being said now, and before she realized it she was making her way home, the same route she had taken a thousand times. Places remain the same, but it’s the moments that make them. The curve where she sat with an open wound on her knee after running from her sister and falling when they were 13 and 15, the bench outside the convenience store where she would buy her vodka and chugged it before even walking two blocks, the old thrift store where Trixie had bought three swimsuits cover ups, now completely coopted by hipsters taking classes at Berklee. She had walked those streets one and a thousand times, and made more memories than she could count, but now they were all tainted with Trixie. It was like she was seeing the city through pink glasses, and wasn’t that completely fitting. 

_“I still don’t understand why we need to go through all this trouble for just one night. And she is a little bird, she may not even eat all of this”. Yeah, Katya remembered._ Trixie had gotten sulkier as the day had progressed. _“Because I never have people over and when I do it’s just Red Bulls and saltines, I want to be a good host. Even if it means stocking my fridge with overpriced vegan food. It’s common decency” Katya said, tossing a second box of cookies into her basket. “You were literally eating a beef burrito when you came pick me up from the airport!” Trixie protested. "That’s because you are not people. You are you”, Katya had brushed off. She felt herself blushing, like she was fucking 16 and not a grown adult doing groceries on a Thursday night. “Besides, the place is already a mess and that is wrecking my brain” Katya fidget with her keys in her hands, no matter the fact that they were 10 blocks away from Chinatown still. “Your place always looks a mess” Trixie said, even if he had never been there, mindlessly scratching the back of his head, adding a bottle of milk to their things, certain without asking that Katya was probably out. (Drag queens don't buy perishable food, Bianca had told her once. When you are three weeks on the road and only two days home, it’s not a good investment.) “Let’s get back home, I want to shower before Courtney starts lecturing you on the chemicals in your hair products” Trixie had yawned then, and even now, almost two years after, Katya could still feel the warmth that had invaded her, that had completely spread over her underneath the fluorescent lights in the diary aisle. The way in which with just one line, Trixie could take over her house, her city, her entire life. If she was not completely in it by then, that moment was the make or break it. Trixie Mattel owned her completely, and it scared her just how easily he could fit in her life._

Trixie, Trixie again. Katya had successfully gone more than a month without seeing him and she was alright and yet the moment she had stepped out of her plane, the humid Boston air hitting her face, she could feel the minutes passing until Trixie arrived, until he was there, until they were home. Something turned in her stomach, guilt maybe, because unlike way back, things were complicated right now. The three month window that was the only time neither one of them had been in a relationship while they knew each other (usually Trixie and his pathological need to fall in love with everyone) had found them in that very city, the moment and the place so perfect that Katya had decided to go for it. She shook her head and made her way around Columbus Park, the kids running around and enjoying the last warm days of the fall, her hands almost aching to grab her phone. She wanted to light a cigarette, she wanted to go back and curl at her sister’s couch while she transcribed papers, she wanted to be selling wigs to deranged meth addicts, she wanted to open the door to her old green apartment and find her stuff there, and she desperately wanted to text Trixie. She wanted to write “I miss you” “I’m excited to see you”, “The city is not the same without you” but couldn't. Too much water had gone under the bridge and they weren’t just two rising stars touring the city anymore. They would hug tonight, they would get dinner, they would put on their drag and perform. The crowd would cheer and they would crack some jokes. Places, habits didn’t change. People did. 

—————————

To say she wasn’t feeling like herself lately was an understatement. The pure, undisputed happiness she had experienced lately had grounded her in a new way. She had to learn to live with the anxiety that came when good things were happening to you, which makes you second guess everything you’ve done and try not to lose your mind over the future. The last time she had felt this way was right after shooting season 7, and all she could do back then was stay on the phone for hours with Trixie, chain-smoking and venting, opening up to someone she had just met. Fuck, why was her brain constantly taking her to him today? In classic Bostonian fashion, the one that reminds you you can’t count on anything, not even a nice sunny day, it started raining at that moment, just seconds away from getting home. Not her actual house, but home anyways.

She shielded herself from the rain and adjusted her cap, struggling but succeeding to light a cigarette amid the wind, reasoning that if she was going to wait for the weather to calm down, so could she.

**He moved like the sunset**  
**God, who painted that?**  
**First he loved my accent**  
**How his knees could bend**  
   
The rain had gotten so heavy she couldn’t see past the street, but the red from the front of Jacques still beamed in the afternoon that had turned grey. She had stood in that spot across her working place so many times, finishing a cigarette before climbing the set of stairs, talking to a friend after a gig, just looking up and seeing the lights in her apartment on, a testament to her life, feeling like she was really there and alive, making a place and a name for herself in the busy city.

She could feel the twist in her stomach again, very different and unlike her usual anxiety or despair. She recognized the feeling as expectation, the same she had felt walking down that road before, worried that Trixie was not going to like her place, that he was going to see her piles of clothes and discarded wigs and go flying off the door.

_“B for Barbra? For Brenda? For brainwashed into believing your drag is something resembling logic?? HAAAAA”_ Katya remembered watching in awe as Trixie screamed laughed and dropped his stuff all over the place, putting their groceries away in her fridge and pointing at the letter hanging from her wall. _“If you ever move out of this den, I want that”_ he said, popping his head from the open door of the fridge.

_“B for that Big juicy Butt of yours” Katya laughed off, thinking that the day she decided to leave her favorite place will never come but knowing that if Trixie asked her, she would drop everything and move anywhere. She stood there, in her kitchen, so fascinated at how seamlessly he fit in her place. It was unconceivable to think that a year ago they didn’t know each other, and now she couldn’t imagine more than a week without talking, rambling on the phone for hours and brainstorming new episodes for their show. She had gone 34 years living in a way that resembled being fine, even with its ups and downs, and now she realized just how much of a half-life that was. In the last month she wanted to do something, to take a leap and take a chance but the fear of losing whatever it was they had, paralyzed her. But here, at her house, the only safe place she knew, part of that force that stopped her seemed to be lifting on. She thanked the lord Courtney called in that very moment to let them know she was on her way from the airport because for a second there she didn’t know if she could restrain herself._

Living in Los Angeles had it perks. She was close to her work, close to her boyfriend, close to most of their friends. Traffic didn’t suck that bad when you factored in 20 minutes before planning your route and there was always things to see and do. For quite some time Trixie’s little WeHo apartment worked as her foster home in LA and his pristine grey couch as Katya’s bed. She had willed herself never to move from Boston but there was no point in her staying there. One day she made her mind and decided that staying put was just avoiding the next logical step, and had packed up her stuff in less than a fortnight. She still held on to all that crap, neatly packed and labeled at her parents’ house, and only sublet her apartment to a nice girl that was starting getting booked more regularly. It was an old habit of expecting the worse and preparing for it, the reassuring fact that if her life fell to pieces, she could still make her way back to where it all had started. The keys burned in her pocket and she wondered if the new tenant had change the locks, and if she could climb to her old place and open the door, pretend time hadn’t gone by. But even in the gloomy afternoon she knew she couldn’t, because even if she did, it wouldn’t feel the same.

**But I feel something is wrong**  
**But I fell this cake just isn't done**  
**Don't say that you don't**  

They had left so many things unsaid that night, and all the others that followed, that it felt like she also still held the keys to a relationship that she didn’t own anymore. She had attributed their latest awkward texts and calls to the overbooking they were in the middle off, the stress from their new tv show, the inevitable distance that comes form being in different continents all the time. But they had spent more time apart than together since day one and it still only felt different now, and she knew they were just circling around a conversation that was bound to happen sooner or later. The talk that used to pop up every six months, when they they thought they had stumbled upon a new discovery and they silently prayed that would change things. They had stood under this very lamp trying to figure it out once, and they had posponed actually speaking their minds. Katya wondered if she would still be this happy with Trixie, if they would still be this close or if they would have screwed everything up like she expected to had they actually closed that line. She looked up once more, under the now gone rain that had turned into just a sprinkling of drops and thought about that night once again. The night that she had tried so heavily to lock away, to not think about.

She remembered Trixie’s closeness and smell, his fresh cologne that separated Brian from Trixie so clearly, the certainty that it would penetrate not only her linens but her entire bedroom and linger there for days after he was gone. In the dead of night, Courtney’s even breaths the only sound in the small apartment, she had leaned in and put her entire heart and all of her cards on the table, closing the space between their lips, changing everything for both of them. If they had recovered from that, from the reject in Trixie’s voice, from Katya’s uncomfortable look over the kitchen counter the next morning, they would recover from whatever funk they were stuck in now. They had to. Katya couldn’t bear walk those streets without knowing that they were going to do so together once again.

**It's gets so fucking cold**  
**I loved his secret places**  
**But I can't go anymore**  
**"You change like sugar cane"**  
**Says my northern lad**  
**I guess you go too far**  
**When pianos try to be guitars**

She made her way towards her hotel, trying to leave behind all memories still locked in that one bedroom that didn’t longer belong to her. She would bring her boyfriend with her next time, try to paint over that strong accent with a new one, to replace guitar strings with piano keys, to make her old coworkers not ask about Trixie every time Katya showed up, to get her mum to stop bugging her with texts about AllStars3 worrying that Trixie was overworking himself, like he was her fourth child. She would make Boston be entirely of her own once more, leave only scars where there were once wounds so deep they needed intensive care. _“When I say it was weird I mean I never thought this was going to happen. We have to much to lose to be reckless”, Trixie’s choked up voice came back._ Well, she was never careful in this city, Katya wanted to say even after all this time. Why should she be careful with her heart?

**I feel the West in you**  
**And I feel it falling apart too**  
**Don't say that you don'** t  
**And if you could see me now**  
**When it's time to turn the page**  
**When you're only wet**  
**Because of the rain**

She could not longer tell if the damp in her cheeks was from the rain or the tears that had at one point started coming, and now she couldn’t do anything to stop them. She wanted desperately to close that chapter in her life but not this way. Not by falling apart or growing apart. And when she sees Trixie standing in the rain, drenched as she is too, she knows one day they will. But not here, and not now. Not when it still feels like they are still writing their story.


End file.
